OK, as you may know, the Oscar balloting for Best Picture is different than any of the other categories. It is a preferential balloting system, where the choices are ranked and those films with the least amount of support have their votes transferred to a film lower on the same list. No point values, it is still one-person-one-vote, but that vote can migrate from your #1 pick to a lower ranked film if your #1 is thrown out of the running.
So, for this poll
(1) Vote in the poll for your Top Film overall, and
(2) Rank the films (some or all, as you choose) how you would if you had an Academy ballot
By the day of the award ceremony, I’ll apply the same system in tabulating the ranked lists to see how it differs from the poll.
I thought Zero Dark Thirty was the best film, but I think its politics will prevent it winning the Oscar.
My take on Amour is that somewhere in that 2-plus hours of footage is a really excellent 90-minute movie. Some editing would have helped.
Life of Pi stayed with me, both for its visuals and for its ambiguity.
Silver Linings Playbook is very fine, too. I would be fine with any of those first three winning.
Lincoln features a couple of great performances, but the script was a little flat.
Django Unchained is to great film what a comic book is to great literature. Now, Django is an excellent comic book of a movie, but it is still a comic book.
*
Beasts of the Southern Wild* was trippy and visually enthralling, and featured some nice performances, but there just wasn’t a lot of meat there script-wise.
However, I am guessing Argo will win, since (as most of us know) Hollywood loves movies about Hollywood.
I actually think AMOUR is probably better, but know it will win Foreign Language so want to give a leg up to a film I enjoyed immensely that may have a hard time winning anywhere else.
Ditto ZDT, which I personally wasn’t a big fan of, but which I would prefer to have win over such mainstream mediocrities as ARGO or LES MIZ
I have not seen Amour. This is the first year I’ve seen so many Best Picture nominees. I did see all of 1998’s before the ceremony, but there were only 5.
Of the above movies, only Les Mis and Django earned the nomination. I could fill in 7 more movies in 2012 I liked more. Again, I’ve not seen Amour.
Zero Dark Thirty, Silver Linings Playbook, and Amour are all terrific in their own way.
Argo is nicely made and very entertaining, so I don’t have a problem with it winning, even if I don’t think it’s the best mainstream choice here.
Beasts of the Southern Wild is a memorable oddity that I admire, even though the rest of the movie doesn’t live up to the spectacular opening.
Django Unchained is ambitious and fascinating to watch but kind of a mess, while Lincoln is pretty much the opposite: impecabbly made but a bit too safe and stately.
Life of Pi just wasn’t all that interesting to me (and I hated the frame story), and Les Miserables is just all-around bad.
I have not seen Amour – it only just started playing near here, in one theater within 100 miles, and I’m not going to be able to see it before Sunday. So I’ve left it out of my votes. I don’t think it will win BP anyway, because people get to vote for it for Best Foreign Film instead.
So here are my rankings for the other eight, which I did see.
Argo
Life of Pi
Silver Linings Playbook
Lincoln
Django Unchained
Les Miserables
Beasts of the Southern Wild
Zero Dark Thirty.
I really liked the top five on my list; almost any one of them could be #1 depending on my mood. Les Mis was good but fell short of its potential. Beasts was okay, although I liked the little girl a lot. ZDT was disappointing; it was the last one I saw and maybe my expectations were too high.